Henderson: Picking up the pieces

The fate of the Art Gallery of Windsor is supposedly hanging in the balance as city councillors prepare to vote Monday on whether to acquire the gallery’s money-losing building overlooking Riverside Drive for a fraction of its original price.

We’re supposed to believe, because we all like a little creative tension in our lives, that this is nail-biting time and that councillors, having heard loudly from the usual gallery foes, will have a difficult time deciding whether to proceed with the $2.5 million purchase or sit back and watch one of Windsor’s cultural icons go under just a stone’s throw from the city aquatic centre now under construction.

Truth is, this is as close to a no-brainer as this council has faced. The $22- million structure, however flawed in design, is integral to the city’s plan to create a hub-and-spokes museum operation and relocate the main library from its current location.

You can bet on heated opposition Monday. For a small but vociferous segment of Windsorites, the gallery is akin to a matador’s cloak waved under the flared nostrils of a raging bull. They hate the joint. Why? Perhaps they see it as elitist. A haven for snobs. Perhaps they remember that “creative” cornflakes stunt on the riverfront. That went over really well (not) in a city with more than its share of food banks. Or maybe they just failed art class and it left deep emotional scars.

Whatever the trigger, every city budget session brings furious calls to cut off the gallery from funding. Not a dime. Let ‘er die, they howl with malicious glee.

Thankfully, the deal council will vote on is a win-win business opportunity for the city and an increasingly desperate gallery. For $2.5 million, the city gets a building in a prime waterfront location that cost provincial taxpayers (in reality it was built with interim casino revenues, mostly from Detroiters) nine times that amount. Not a good bargain? The land alone should be worth that much.

“This saves the city millions,” insisted Mayor Eddie Francis in an interview this week. Francis said the city will secure prime museum space that would have cost from $8 million to $12 million to build from the ground up. The savings, he said, could be invested in buildings like the Francois Baby house and the Sandwich jail as part of the city’s hub-and- spokes museum strategy. I’m still not sure how the new library fits in. There can’t possibly be sufficient space in the existing building for all three operations. It will apparently become clear in the new year how space will be allocated and what bricks and mortar will be required,

“More importantly,” said Francis, “this saves the art gallery.”

Hate the place if you will, but having a boarded-up gallery rotting in our downtown would send out one godawful message about Windsor to investors and anyone considering moving here. It would confirm all the rustbucket stereotypes. And my, wouldn’t a gallery closing, proof of cultural backwater status, be great rectal fodder for our good friend Stephen Colbert and his Windsor-dissing writing team.

If the deal proceeds, as it surely will, it will leave Windsor hitting three for three in 2012, like a clean-up batter, when it comes to eradicating real and potential eyesores that have been festering here and dragging down this city’s image.

In the space of six months Windsor has fixed the Capitol Theatre mess by creating a new home for the Windsor Symphony, ended the impasse over the Grace Hospital wasteland and now has a chance to put the art gallery on a stable footing while creating a thriving centre of downtown activity.

What’s not to like? Plenty if you belong to that sad little group that takes its perverse joy from seeing Windsor fail. For the rest of us, these are uplifting days.

Windsor could technically have washed its hands of all three open sores. It had no part in the debacles involving the Capitol, the Grace property or the gallery. It had nothing to do with the mismanagement of the Capitol; it had no say in the hospital board decision to sell the Grace site to a company that lacked deep pockets or the province’s decision to award an extended care centre contract to someone who was up to his ass in financial alligators; it didn’t design an art gallery that was impractical to operate.

But if you’re going to be blamed anyway, as is inevitably the case in this city, you might as well roll up your sleeves and fix the problem.

Fortunately, our city hall fix-it squad, led by Francis, has become remarkably adept at repairing screw-ups inherited from less accountable organizations.

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